


Lagom?

by TwaCorbies (Brynnen)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Action, Comment Fic, Friendship, Gen, Mother hen Ian, Recovery, Redemption, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:30:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9672869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brynnen/pseuds/TwaCorbies
Summary: Still mentally reeling from his ordeal at Loki's hands, is what's left of Erik enough to aid Thor and Jane in their fight to save the nine realms?





	1. Chapter 1

The carrier bag of medications was so heavy that Ian stumbled over his words as he confirmed the lie that Erik Selvig was his father. There were a lot of medicines; the names Lithium and Prozac leapt out at him immediately, but the benzodopiates and MAOIs were equally concerning. Ian shuddered internally. Darcy had tried to explain on the way over, but all he'd been able to retain was something about the business in New York and Selvig being a brilliant mind. Thus far he'd seen more of the man's todger than any alleged brilliance. The bag weighed heavy in his had. What had the poor sod been through?

  
The police must have rummaged through lost and found to find something to cover the esteemed physicist's arse. The shorts and stained cardigan they'd rooted out for him really added to the overall impression of a mad uncle. Selvig hugged Darcy longer than even Americans found acceptable and Ian was worried he'd get the same treatment in the name of verisimilitude. Instead Selvig gave him an absent smile as he pawed through the bag of drugs and made an off-handed comment about having been mind-occupied by a mythological figure. That probably would have been the last straw had Ian not been aware Jane was dating the perpetrator's equally mythological brother. Even knowing that, he wasn't sure what to make of the older man.

  
Selvig showered at the flat that had become their base of operations and Ian wondered at what kind of funding Selvig had managed to get hold of to be able to afford such a nice flat in central London. He also laid out a set of clothing, just in time for Selvig to wander in starkers and holding, rather than wearing the towel.

  
'Ian, wasn't it? Thanks for helping me get out of there.' He sounded exhausted, his accent thicker than it had been at the police station.

  
'That's alright, all part of the interning package, but please put some clothes on!' Ian looked up at the curtain rail, feeling awkward and embarrassed on the other guy's behalf.

  
Selvig looked down and appeared to notice his nudity. His expression was blank, see!ingly nonplussed by Ian's squeamishness. 'Since... I feel confined by them. Trousers and jackets weigh on me, like little prisons.'

  
His eyes were dark and troubled, like a man who has endured things no other could understand. He looked older than even at the police station, shoulders hunched slightly as he spoke even obliquely about an experience he clearly never wanted to think about again. Ian felt something wrench in his chest, the man was all too human, stressed and stretched to almost breaking point. According to Darcy he looked better than he had, but Ian thought that was hard to believe.

  
'Pants and a shirt at least, please?' Ian held up the y-fronts like a talisman, pleading. His voice was soft, he didn't want to bully this man, he wanted to make him hot tea and toast and tell him it was all going to be alright. But it wasn't going to be alright and if Ian couldn't get the man metaphorically back on his feet and steered back towards his workbench then it never would be. 'There is a lady present after all.'

  
'Well, if there is a lady present....' Selvig conceded with what Ian felt was unnecessary sarcasm and put on the pants, shirt and a tie, which Ian hadn't insisted on, but he felt like Selvig was trying to distract him from pressing the matter of trousers.

  
Then science appeared to be in progress, the sight of Jane's notes and gubbins had galvanised him and Selvig rattled off a series of directions and orders that sent Darcy scurrying off to his lodgings a mile or so away in order to collect his notes. The new notes joined Jane's quite happily, spiky intermingling with scrawly, spreading all over the place along with tools and miscellaneous bits of tech. When Ian asked what it was all about, Selvig tried to explain the sheets of formulae.

  
'The alignment happens every five thousand years and according to my calculations will only be in effect for eleven or twelve minutes. Not such a long time, eh? But such a big headache for us in the meantime.' Selvig said ruefully. The stubble on his cheeks rasped as he rubbed his face, almost as if he were trying to wash away the exhaustion dogging him.

  
'Our best hope is to disrupt the energies involved. Like listening to the radio at the edge of it's band... there's interference from other radio stations, police and taxi company radio bands.'

  
Ian chuckled and put the kettle on to boil. 'You've written a few popular science articles in your time, Doctor.'

  
'Ha, the over-simplistic analogy tipped you off! Are there any of those nice chocolate biscuits left?' Selvig stood with a quiet grunt and shuffled over to peer in the cupboard. Sitting hunched over a laptop for almost two days straight had finished off the job the police manhandling had begun in wrecking his joints. Everything ached.

  
The cupboard was bare, the likely culprit, Darcy, had scarpered off to Argos and PC World with Selvig's latest shopping list and his credit card. Ian hoped the shop assistants weren't overly observant kind - there was no way she could pass as an Erik.

  
'No, but I think the man at the corner shop has started laying in extra stocks of chocolate Hob-Nobs since Jane and Darcy arrived in London. I'll nip out and get another packet, back in a jiffy!'

  
Jane turned up with Thor and the car keys the next day. Once Selvig and Jane got into the same room, his brilliance came to the fore and you forgot about the edge in his voice and the lack of trousers. Ian and Darcy were relegated to gophering and making cups of tea and coffee.

The professor and his brilliant young protégé shone, rattling off strings of words in some alien language and only very occasionally giving themselves electric shocks as they worked to create a device no human had even conceived of before, let alone fabricated.

  
Selvig rubbed his neck, fumbling to try and massage away the tension that spiked up into his head, a pain that made him worry that everything was going to go blue again. Unbidden his fingers slipped under his shirt buttons to relieve the pressure enclosing him and a strangled noise came out of him without conscious input from his brain. Not again!

  
A weight landed on his shoulders and Erik yelped. He startled half out of his chair in shock and the blue receded. Jane stirred slightly at the noise where she slumped at the kitchen table almost coccooned in the notes they'd been making. Selvig realised the weight was warm and smelt of lavender at the same time Ian pressed two paracetamol into one hand and a glass of water into the other.

  
'It's one of those heat bean-bag thingies girls use for period pain. It should sort out the tension in your neck, Dr Selvig.' The young intern's face was painfully earnest as he answered some unspoken question Erik hadn't realised was visible on his face.

'Without you and Jane to do your phase shifty transformer thing, Thor honestly doesn't stand a chance against these svartalfen lot, does he? I'd be more hindrance than help with the science, my degree's all about mitochondrial DNA for the record, so I'm helping in the only way I can. That being by keeping you on your feet until this alignment is all over. At that point either we will all be dead, or you can collapse on that nice comfy sofa and sleep yourself out.' Ian paused to watch Selvig swallow the painkillers. 'Personally I'm hoping for the second option.'

  
Selvig managed a wan smile for the young man who was fussing and trying to help, even as Erik suspected that there was no helping him. Not after Loki.

  
'I'm hoping for the sofa and blanket option too, actually. It looks very comfortable.' He was practically fantasising about it, although he doubted he'd manage it - the Nembutal had been in the carrier bag he'd pitched in the bin. He needed to be sharp for this and the drugs were a foggy hindrance he could not risk with so much at stake.

  
Erik stood up to stretch and wandered over to the French windows that led out to the balcony. As he flicked the latch to open the doors Ian reappeared with a blanket, insisting he drape it about him so he didn't catch cold. English people were weird, did the boy forget Erik had grown up in far colder temperatures?

  
The night air was clear, by London standards at least, and the lights of a near-dormant capital twinkled. Erik inhaled deeply, feeling the breeze ruffling through his unkempt hair. Air moving on his skin, the sounds of other people all around him and the ever present roar of traffic helped ease the tension in his shoulders even as the heat pack leeched warmth into his strained muscles. His mind was his and his alone for now. He ignored the way his gut clenched at that thought, reminded himself that Thor said Loki was dead. Erik wondered about that, he would have felt the removal of those icy tendrils from his mind and soul, surely?

  
Ian turned away from covertly observing Selvig and nearly jumped out of his skin at the way Thor had appeared behind him. No one should be able to move that silently!

'Both times I have seen that man since our first meeting he has been forced to work himself almost to death, whether by compulsion or his own choice.' Thor paused, considering. 'Or both. The little lore-master has honour and a sort of bravery beyond simple courage in battle. My brother used him like a candle, burning through his strength and wit without care or caution. Selvig created a device even the great Man of Iron struggles to comprehend, yet even while his mind was occupied by my brother he was able to create a 'fail safe' within this machine that allowed the Avengers team to foil the Chitauri and capture Loki.'

  
Ian could only nod mutely in response. This was relevant and Thor needed to get it off his chest, so Ian listened to Thor's uncharacteristically soft-spoken description on Erik's previous kidnapping by his own brother.

Apparently he was the person people told Selvig anecdotes to. Earlier Jane had admitted not being as aware of her mentor as she'd thought she should be, due to missing Thor desperately and the job of a lifetime she now suspected had been a ruse to isolate Erik from anyone who might notice he was missing. In the mean time, Erik was losing weight and he was sliding back towards the state she'd found him in, visiting him after the New York affair.

  
Thor carefully tucked a blanket around Jane's shoulders and smoothed her hair in a delicate, tender gesture that made Ian acutely aware of the depth of the man's love for Jane. He straightened and inclined his head to Ian in a grave, dignified nod. Ian felt the weight of expectation settle on his shoulders, but let his mouth work itself into a smile that he hoped was reassuring.

  
Since Thor had headed off to the bedroom Darcy wasn't occupying Ian stretched out on the sofa. He closed his eyes and let the sounds of Selvig returning to his work lull him to sleep. Paper rustled and occasional Swedish mumblings soothed him into dreams. Eventually, as dawn broke over the capital, sleep claimed Erik too and his head sank onto his forearms.

'So Erik, what do you think?' Jane asked nervously. Realistically it was too late to do anything but tweak the calibrations and she wished they'd had longer.

  
Selvig drained his second mug of coffee and Ian filled it again from the cafetiere. 'It's the best we can do. The range is better than I feared and your work really refined our ability to home in on frequencies. We are as ready as we can be.'

  
'Just as soon as you've put some pants on, sure.' Darcy corrected him, giving his lobster-patterned boxer shorts a meaningful look. The people of London were so not ready for that much Erik-flesh on display.

  
Trousers safely on again, he stood with the others in a rough huddle by the car and he took Jane's hand. If this succeeded it would not atone for his failures, but it was the right thing to do and they were the only people who could do it. He hoped against hope that his beautiful Jane survived, or that if she didn't then he didn't either. He wasn't sure he could survive another loss.

  
'Good luck everyone!' Ian broke the silence with an awkward grin and clapped Darcy on the shoulder. It broke the spell and they all mumbled something similar before squeezing into the car with their equipment.

Finding the Svartalfen wasn't particularly hard what with the detector and the way that they bowled up in massive black spaceships that looked like vast Gothic axeheads perched precariously on their blades. The hard part was doing their part without getting crushed in the fray, fried by the laser weapons or flattened by falling debris.

  
Chaos erupted around them and Jane and Selvig got to work, Thor leaping into the fray to defend both them and the fair city around them. Londoners screamed and engines roared as another city's peace was destroyed by transdimensional monsters.

  
Erik didn't take in much of the battle, too busy trying to stay alive while doing complex transdimensional equations in his head, trying to get the theodolites into the right place and desperately trying not to wet himself in the chaos. Jane dragged him out of harm's way by the back of his jacket and they retreated to quickly take stock and reevaluate their plan. They had one chance to do this. His breath caught in his chest and Erik winced. He was too old, too broken for this.

  
Thor fell and fear seized Erik; fear for himself, Thor, the nine worlds... everyone. Grief and terror tore at him as Jane ran to throw herself across her beloved in an instinctive, futile protective gesture born of love. Erik gasped for breath as he recalibrated the control panel, fingers flying. If this didn't work then at least he'd die with Jane, Thor, Darcy and Ian.

  
He was barely even aware of the leaps in reasoning he made to try and force a cobbled together Rosen Bridge into existence. He hardly understood the forces at hand, feverishly praying to half-forgotten gods as he worked. His hands shook as a shadow fell over him, the huge spaceship thing toppling, coming down towards them too fast to avoid.

  
Erik stabbed the execute button desperately and the theodolites flickered, bringing to life a portal above their heads. It yawned open and swallowed the falling ship over Jane's upturned, tearstained face. The two lovers stared upwards in blank shock that it had worked. The controller fell from limp hands as Erik's knees weakened and his mind emptied with sheer relief. It had worked!

  
He didn't remember much after that, Darcy was saying something, there were people and sound and the warm car....

  
Erik came to his senses at the sound of the engine shutting off and he peered out of the window to find Darcy had got them back to the flat. Thor opened the door for him and the pair of them slumped into one another, leaning their weight into each other to get upright and through the door. Bouncing off walls and doorframes they staggered to the bedroom and Erik blacked out as soon as he hit the horizontal plane.

  
It was over.


	2. Chapter 2

The streets of London were still chaos, even by the time Clint got there. If he were mayor of a big city he'd think about sending Selvig a polite un-invite telling him to stay the Hell away, just in case he really was summoning aliens every time he headed into a major metropolitan area.

  
Clint closed the front door behind him and paused in the hall doorway, looking into the kitchen. 'Crazy big science project you had out there, Prof.'

  
Selvig didn't comment on the fact he hadn't given anyone the key to his front door.

  
'Agent Barton. Will you have some coffee?' Selvig looked wrecked, better than post New York, but worse than he had the last time Clint had seen him.

  
Selvig poured the coffee, then rummaged in a cupboard for a packet of cookies of a make Clint didn't recognise. There was a moment's silence as they drank, before Clint asked one of the questions he had for the scientist.

  
'Did it help?'

  
Selvig stared into the depths of his drink. He couldn't bear eye contact, not right now. 'It shouldn't.'

  
'What's that movie quote? "The one who saves a life saves the whole world", something like that?' Clint deliberately misquoted. He'd seen the film half a dozen times, but he thought maybe Selvig needed to rewatch it.

  
Selvig made an exasperated noise, not sure he was ready for a pep talk from a man young enough to be his son. 'He who saves one life saves the world entire.' The quote reminded him oddly of William Blake's poetry, or quantum physics. 'It's from the Talmud and Schindler's List quoted it. Of course Schindler didn't nearly cause the literal destruction of all humanity and actually cause the deaths of almost eight hundred people.'

  
'He also didn't literally save nine realms' worth of people, animals, plants andnshit from getting tossed into eternal darkness.'

  
'Swings and roundabouts then, Hawkeye?' Selvig asked mockingly.

  
Clint was unmoved by the jeer. 'Maybe. Dr Banner sends his regards by the way. He figured your involvement as soon as he saw controlled dimensional portals. He was pretty impressed.' That bit had been plain, even if Clint hadn't been able to make head or tail out of the rest of what he'd said about it.

  
Selvig's eyebrows shot up. 'He follows my work?'

  
'Uh huh, and your spear thingies were apparently a leap of brilliance.'

  
Selvig shrugged. 'The Bifrost showed me it was possible to create and control a Rosen Bridge. When you know a thing can be done, doing it becomes easier. Beside, I had Jane helping.'

  
Her work had been invaluable. With just a few more decades of learning, researching, honing her mind she would truly be a force to be reckoned with, as long as she stayed in academia and wasn't lured away by the seductive wallets of big industry. The thought gave him a pang of melancholy. She would leave him behind soon and strike off in her own direction of research, doing wonderful things. They all did sooner or later.

  
'These cookies are great!' Clint enthused, his mouth full.

  
Selvig smiled ruefully. 'Your sweet tooth is probably the only positive detail I can recall from our time under Loki's influence. They're British, so you'll have to find excuses to come back and stock up.'

  
'I... I remember underneath it all being impressed by your brilliance as well as scared at what you could do. Last month showed that the smarts were all yours, even if Loki made you do it. I had wondered how much if that was Loki and how much was you.'

  
'He had a concept. Like a drawing on the back of the envelope he knew what he wanted, but with no idea on how to make that sketch reality.' Erik sighed and twisted in his seat to pull a bottle of schnapps off a shelf behind him. He poured a measure into his own mug, then Clint's too at the other man's nod.

  
'His ignorance of the science behind his plan was why he had to have such a tight hold on me, overwhelming my personality, my me with power while keeping my intellect and knowledge intact.'

  
Clint remembered the unshaven manic figure Selvig had made, working feverishly in the back of the van as if he might drop if he closed his eyes for even a second. When Clint hadn't been needed the mind control had eased, allowing him to work out or read magazines, even if the leash was too tight for him to slip.

  
'You were a threat he had to monitor closely, I wasn't.' The thought rankled.

  
'He was wrong there though, wasn't he? Loki forgot about a power other than magic, science or knowledge. Your friend Romanov. Betrayal to him... He could not imagine that anyone would strive to save you even after all he'd forced you to do. Your friend Natalya did, thanks to a friendship forged through adversity, respect and affection. Those bonds enabled you to break free and help defeat the Chitauri.'

Clint considered that. Natasha had saved him, but he'd saved Natasha before, more than once, but most importantly by refusing to carry out Shield's kill order on her, then persuading Coulson to back him up on it.

  
'Is this some Zen shit? Life is a spider web where everything you do influences the whole?'

  
Selvig shrugged, 'No system is entirely closed. If Natalya were not your trusted colleague would you have broken free of Loki's control to assist in defeating the Chitauri? If Loki hdn't raped my mind and used my intellect like a brutish weapon to commit heinous crimes would my research have progressed along the lines that enabled me and Jane to help prevent a pan-dimensional holocaust?'

  
'Fatalism doc?' Clint was surprised. He got up to pour them another coffee, heavy on the schnapps and was suddenly overcome by the feeling of being closed in. He toed off his shoes hurriedly as Erik began to unbutton his shirt.

  
'You could call it fatalism, I'd rather call it pattern recognition.' Selvig's voice became indistinct as he bent over to unlace his shoes. They didn't stop though. The time had come to lance this boil. 'Every human is the sum of their experiences, for better or for worse. The only way to move forward is to stop them overwhelming you and to learn your lesson from them.'

  
Air flowed over his skin and Clint's shoulders relaxed at the sense of relief not being imprisoned by his clothes brought. 'I suppose that's true, but the shit we did.. We can't just shrug it off with a 'hey we did some awful stuff, but we've learnt our lesson now.', life doesn't work like that buddy.'

  
'No it doesn't.' Selvig agreed wearily, seeing the matching lines of pain and tiredness in Clint's face. 'I tried reading self help books afterwards, you know. It didn't help, there was no chapter helping to cope with the aftermath after a mythological fgure plays you like a banjo.'

  
Clint snorted. 'I guess it got cut to save on costs.'

  
They sat naked before one another; the only people qualified, through ordeal, to judge one another's conduct in this affair. 'A man could spend his whole life doing good works and never fully atone for his wrongs.' Selvig's tone was thoughtful as he popped another biscuit in his mouth.

  
'Yeah,' Clint stared back into the past with hollow eyes. Way too much red in his ledger, always had been, even as he busted his baslls to wipe it clean. There was no chance now, even Nat gave him those kind of looks now and she was the Black Widow. 'You can't smooth over New York. No way in Hell we're ever gonna get forgiven for that, but you did good.'

  
Selvig gave Hawkeye a wan smile. 'As did you and you are continuing to do good. They say virtue is its own reward, perhaps it can be a ... consolation as well?' He didn't sound like he believed it, Clint certainly didn't.

  
'Nah, what we did's always going to be there in the back of our minds. We'll never be free of it, 'til the day we die.' Clint paused, looked at Selvig consideringly. He decided to say it and to Hell with the fallout. 'I'm just glad I wasn't alone in it.'

  
The words were like purifying rain on Selvig's mind. They hadn't been alone, and sat in a strange kitchen, far from home and naked with the man he'd shared atrocities with it was enough.


End file.
